Jesse Jarue Mark was one of the first African-Americans to gain a PhD in botany, and likely to be the first at Iowa State University, where he joined the faculty.[1] He was also a Rockefeller Agriculture Fellow.[2]

Jesse Jarue Mark was born in 1906 in Apple Springs, Texas,[1] a town that had a school with 28 children in 1896 and a total population of 75 by World War I.[3] A mis-spelling of his name as Jessie in the historical record appears to have led to the assumption that he was a woman.[1]

Mark attended the historically Black college, Prairie View State College (now Prairie View A&M University). He was awarded a baccalaureate degree in 1929.[1] Mark earned his master's degree at Iowa State University (ISU) in 1931, gained a position as professor at Kentucky State Industrial College (now Kentucky State University), and continued research associated with the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station at ISU,[1] a research program that was founded in 1888.[4]

Mark was awarded his PhD by ISU in 1935. His doctoral work, "The relation of reserves to cold resistance in alfalfa", was published in 1936 and is in university version[5] and journal version online.[6] Mark studied cold resistance by growing six varieties of Grimm alfalfa known to have different levels of hardiness to cold. He analyzed samples from 50 representative plants of each variety.